


Canceled Plans

by wackyjacqs



Series: Bizarre Holidays [215]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 14:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20391352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wackyjacqs/pseuds/wackyjacqs
Summary: She doesn’t realize how much she misses the notes in her planner until they stop.





	Canceled Plans

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ‘Planner Day’ (1 August). Set season 7, after Chimera.

With her hands on her hips, Sam looks around her lab, deciding on the best place to start. A part of her always looks forward to this week in the SGC’s calendar – the summer edition of a ‘spring clean’ – as it finally gives her a chance to sort through the paperwork and notes she’s made over the past year but never had the time to file away properly or complete. The downside, however, is that the week is also a reminder of the work she _could_ be exploring further if she wasn’t on the frontlines. She does love it out there in the heat of the battle but lately she’s been thinking about the future and if she should switch to a more lab-based position. It’s a decision she doesn’t want to make right now – maybe in a year or two – so she quickly pushes the thought aside and moves towards the filing cabinet at the far corner of the room.

Looking inside, she decides to start with the bottom shelf and retrieves a pile of papers and notebooks. The first dozen pages are old memos that can be destroyed so she places them into the cardboard box she’s set aside for junk, but when she reaches for the next item she freezes. It’s her planner from her first year at the SGC, and as part of SG-1, and something she had completely forgotten about. Lifting it from the top of the pile, she finds a number of similar planners underneath. There’s six in total and she smiles – one for each year of the Stargate Program. Deciding that her clean-up can wait for a while longer, Sam clears a space on the bench and sits down as she opens the planner from 1997.

As she flicks through the pages, there’s nothing overly interesting to be found. Of the days marked, they mostly consist of the dates SG-1 were due to go off-world or return home; birthday reminders for her team, Cassie, Mark and his kids; the usual. With a sigh, she’s about to throw the book into the box when the planner falls open at another page and her eyes are drawn to one space in particular. It’s been circled three or four times in black ink and inside the shape, written in block capitals, are the words, _"Go home, Carter."_

She glances at the date and realizes it was two days after Jonas Hanson was killed off-world. Following that mission, Sam had spent most of those 48 hours in her lab working her way through her sadness and guilt and anger for her ex-fiancé and the situation as a whole until she wasn’t sure what she was feeling – or how she even _wanted_ to feel. The man that died after being pushed through the Stargate was not the man she had once planned to marry; and even though she no longer felt any romantic feelings towards him, Hanson was still a part of her life but it was suddenly no longer there and the loss had left her feeling unsure and confused. It was why she had chosen to hide away from her teammates, and she’d only left her lab when she absolutely had to, like to use the restroom or stretch her aching muscles, but it was on one of those trips that she had returned to her lab to discover the colonel had found his way in and left her the message. Despite not wanting to go home, Sam knew an order when she heard – or rather read one on this occasion – so she obeyed and strangely did feel better when she returned to work the following morning.

Pulling herself from those thoughts, she gently closes the planner and sets it into the box before her hand moves towards the next one on the pile. Her fingers trace over the ‘1998’ embossed on the cover. Again, there’s not much information aside from birthday or mission dates but Sam finds herself searching for something else. It takes her a few minutes before she finds what she’s been looking for and feels strangely reassured when she does.

Just like the previous year, there’s another date circled in black ink. It coincides with the day her father told her he had cancer. The pang of sadness she feels, however, is quickly replaced with relief as she thinks about how differently the situation could have ended had they not discovered the Tok’ra. With a smile, she makes a note to send her dad a message later, and then turns her attention back to Colonel O’Neill’s note from five years ago. _"Don’t forget to eat."_

When she found out her father was ill, she hadn’t eaten the rest of the day. It was the last thing on her mind; she just felt sick and upset and alone. She also felt anger towards her dad and the way he’d announced his cancer diagnosis, then dismissively told her not to worry before he turned around and left. On the flight back to the SGC, Sam – after some cajoling from General Hammond, had found herself confiding the news in her two superiors. The General had offered his apologies, while her commanding officer hadn’t said much at all, but she didn’t mind. In fact, she appreciated that he didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with small platitudes. He just knew that she wasn’t ready to talk and instead just needed someone there by her side. So, when he’d casually pressed his arm against hers, the touch had helped ground her and kept a lid on her emotions for a little longer until she could be on her own.

Looking back, she remembers making it to her lab, but in the haze of leaving their private transport and returning to the SGC, the colonel had gotten there first because sitting on the bench, on top of her planner, was a glass of blue Jell-O and a plastic spoon.

Closing the book with a smile, Sam picks up the next one.

“1999”, she murmurs wistfully remembering the challenges the team faced that particular year. Immediately, she knows where to turn in the diary and her breath catches at the message she finds. _"Thank you."_

Those two words appeared in her planner almost a week after they’d brought the colonel home from Edora. Almost seven days after Sam realized that her commanding officer hadn’t _wanted_ to come home. He’d started to make a new life on the planet with Laira and Sam’s unprofessional feelings for her commanding officer was something she had to bury as quickly as she discovered they’d existed in the first place.

The memories, even after all these years, still hurt more than they should and Sam slams the book closed. She doesn’t want to keep this one, so she throws it into the box without a second thought.

The year 2000 signifies the fourth planner and it was the year of armbands, Za’tarc’s and illicit feelings. The feelings that had slowly been building between her and the colonel finally came to a head – right before everything came crashing down. Ultimately, there was nothing they could do. They’d had no choice but to lock away their admissions and emotions and focus on the job. The Goa’uld were still a massive threat in the galaxy and that was more important than giving in to their feelings. At least that’s what Sam tried to convince herself of at the time. And then Martouf had died by her own hand and she found herself grieving for him as well. Everything was confusing and Sam wasn’t sure who, exactly, she was mourning the loss of by the end of the day, but after a very long, emotional briefing, she wanted nothing more than to go home. Hammond had approved her request immediately and wasting no time, Sam stopped by her lab to lock it up, only to find Colonel O’Neill had already visited. She was just about to switch off the desk lamp when she caught his message. _"Drive safe."_

She slides this planner to the side and decides it is one to keep. Then, she turns her attention to the one marked 2001. Her blood turns cold and a shiver runs along her spine as she finds the note inside. _"Call me when you’re home."_

She remembers how close she came to dying – and not at the hand of a Goa’uld, or on an alien planet – but at the hands of a pair of scientists on Earth. Flashbacks suddenly invade her mind as images and smells and memories from when she was abducted resurface. She’s thankful the colonel found her in time, and the means he used to do it, but she tries not to think about how close it was.

She takes a deep breath to try and calm her racing heart but she realizes she’s shaking and closes the planner in a hurry as she gets to her feet.

It takes a few moments to regain her equilibrium and Sam’s gaze drifts back to the lab bench. There’s only one planner left; it’s from last year. 2002. Sitting back down, she looks through the pages to find the date she instinctively knows she wants. _"Are you OK?"_

She finds the question circled on the day her father rescued both him and Maybourne from P5X-777’s moon. At the time, she refused to go with her dad for the reunion, citing that she had too much paperwork to catch up with. In reality, however, she was too ashamed and angry at herself; not only over how she let Maybourne overpower her, but how she’d also treated Bill Lee. She had let her emotions rule her head and it shone a light on how she really felt about the disappearance of her team leader. That vulnerability was unacceptable to her, so she hid, and hoped it would go away. She should have known she wouldn’t be able to hide from him for long though, and he had dropped by her lab not long after he’d returned home to thank her for “saving his sorry ass yet again”. She acknowledged his thanks, but their conversation was stifled and she couldn’t quite meet his eye, so he didn’t hang around too long.

She didn’t realize he had written in her planner until he’d left.

Closing the book, Sam throws it on top of the other ones in the box. She’s midway through pushing them to the far end of the bench when she hesitates and her attention turns to her current planner. She pulls it towards her and starts to flick through the pages, her actions becoming more and more erratic until she finally sees a note. _"Get some rest."_

The message was written months ago, after she was stranded on the Prometheus, and she frowns when she sees there are no more after that date. Then, it dawns on her. The messages stopped around the same time as Pete arrived on the scene and the discovery feels like a kick in the gut to Sam.

Whether it’s been the colonel telling her to go home for the night so that she gets some sleep; or reminding her that there’s a team lunch scheduled for thirteen-hundred hours so that she remembers to eat; or a note ordering her to take her pain medication because it really is for her own good, she realizes that this is his way of looking after her. Over the years, it has been his own way of saying he still cares because it’s not something he can – or is actually allowed to – say.

But now things are different and it’s her fault.

She pushes the planner aside and tries to fight away the tears that threaten to fall.

She doesn’t realize how much she misses the notes in her planner until they stop.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for the messages over the past few weeks. Real-life has thrown me quite a few curveballs and everything has been a struggle. Thank you to ConnieN and agrainne24 for being there to talk and listen; to London88, samcaarter, Caladenia and so many others for their support; to Dottybunny and GWhite; to Alice and bunnyrh and others for the incredible comments and kudos you’ve been leaving in my absence. Thank you.
> 
> I will do my best to catch up with this series, but it may take a while as it was a lot harder to get back into writing and complete this chapter than I expected. I am also going to continue to post it as I have been since January; i.e. in different parts. Following some feedback, I looked into rearranging how I share the series, but there is no alternative that works for me. I’ve tried, but unless I delete every single chapter of this series – which I’m not prepared to do right now – there’s no other way to post it. I also don’t want to start posting it differently from this month onwards; for continuity sake, it would be too messy and disjointed in my eyes. I apologize for the inconvenience.


End file.
